How Clockworks Came To Be

Note: You (hopefully) don't need to know any of this to enjoy the story of Clockworks as it unfolds. But if you're interested in things like character sheets and funny shaped dice, this section will be of interest to you.

In a fit of raging originality, Clockworks is based on a tabletop roleplaying campaign I'm running. I didn't plan on making a webcomic when I started the campaign, but a half joking comment by one of my players sparked the idea. Thorton, Toby, Eva, Oliver, Ophelia, and the world they live in just seemed like they would be too much fun to draw and share with everyone that I couldn't resist.

So, a bit about the game. Clockworks the game is a Savage Worlds game, played every other Sunday. The comic actually begins a bit before the game did, during events my players created during character creation.

One of the big advantages of this is that it means I can't get writer's block. I know exactly what's going to happen in the comic, because it's happened in the game. I might get stuck on how to present it, but "where does the story go next?" has already been answered. In a way, it's like making a movie based on a book or something. I'm just adapting and presenting what's already there for a wider audience.

Clockworks is actually the third campaign set in the same world. The first was a game I was the player in. Ruins was a Savage Worlds campaign run by Luke Meyer, featuring our heroes exploring a world just emerging from a great cataclysm. I had been looking for a system to run a game I had in my head, about cool retro technology, old gods waking up, and reemerging magic. I decided Savage Worlds would be a perfect fit, and that several of the themes from Luke's game were similar to what I wanted to do. With his blessing, I ran New Dawn, a campaign set 1,500 years after Ruins. Our heroes traveled the world, blew stuff up, and permanently changed the face of everything. Clockworks is set 50 years after New Dawn, with a new batch of heroes about to face an all new challenge.

And now you know.

There's a mountain of backstory from the three campaigns. I could spend thousands of words just writing out all the crazy stuff that's happened that has made the world the way it is. But I won't. Part of the fun of the comic will be slowly revealing that stuff, sharing the world of Clockworks bit by bit.

I'll be posting game related content to the blog, to fill in the world a bit for anyone interested. You shouldn't need to read it to enjoy the comic but it will be a nice bonus.